1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvement of a method of managing music piece data for a karaoke apparatus, and also to that of a method of managing content data for a content reproducing apparatus.
The present application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-301904, which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
A karaoke apparatus which is currently in widespread use is a so-called sound source karaoke apparatus in which a sound source or the like is driven by music piece data to generate performance [sound] of a karaoke music piece. At a request of the singer, a karaoke apparatus reads out karaoke music piece data stored in a storage device, such as a hard disk, and then performs the karaoke music piece.
Among karaoke music pieces, there are music pieces which are called managed music pieces. Unlike other karaoke music pieces which are always allowed to be performed, performance of each of such managed music pieces is individually allowed by the copyright holder, for each karaoke apparatus.
Such allowance is conducted in the following manner. The copyright holder produces CD-ROMs (i.e., Compact Disc-Read Only Memories) which store the music piece data, the number of which is equal to that of karaoke apparatuses. The CD-ROMs are loaded into the karaoke apparatuses, respectively, whereby the karaoke apparatuses are allowed to perform the music piece. In this way, the number of allowed apparatuses is managed by using physical media, i.e., the number of CD-ROMs.
In the above-described method, the production of such CD-ROMs for respective karaoke apparatuses requires much labor. Since there are a plurality of managed music pieces, the above-described method has a further problem in that, when CD-ROMs of the managed music pieces are loaded into each karaoke apparatus, a disc changer of the karaoke apparatus is filled with the discs of the managed music pieces, thereby causing a problem in that the disc configuration of the disc changer is very inefficient. A usual karaoke music piece is stored in a hard disk, and can be immediately read out therefrom on request. By contrast, with respect to a managed music piece, the process of reading the data of the music piece which is stored on a CD-ROM cannot be started until the CD-ROM is instructed to be loaded into a disc changer and the loading is completed. Consequently, there arises a problem in that a long time period must elapse before a state where a performance in response to a request can be started.
There are a large number of karaoke music pieces which can be performed by a karaoke apparatus. Some of karaoke music pieces are required to be performed only by specific apparatuses. For example, Okinawan folk songs are requested to be performed only by karaoke apparatuses installed in the Okinawa district of Japan. In this manner, music pieces which are seemed to be performed are set in accordance with the district and the location so as to eliminate unnecessary music pieces, in order to reduce the burden of the copyright. However, it is very cumbersome to individually edit a program of music pieces which are to be stored in a hard disk of each of karaoke apparatuses. After a karaoke apparatus is installed, in order to allow new music pieces to be performed, a group of the music pieces must be downloaded to the karaoke apparatus, thereby producing a problem in that such configuring requires a very long time period.
Such configuuring is performed by writing music pieces corresponding to each of karaoke apparatuses onto a hard disk, or by downloading the music pieces from a distribution center. In the method, however, it is not easy to configure each apparatus, and downloading after installation requires much labor.